Main menu

Post navigation

Music for Crickets: Songwriting for the F#@$ing Fun of It.

I used to be in a band, actually several bands: old-timey jazz for swing dancers, a Django-style band, a big band chorus for a bandleader that wrote Frank Zappa/Mel Torme mashups with a nautical theme. An electronica duo that joined forces with some other musicians and became a noise collective that would regularly gather in a really shitty practice space in the SOMA, get hammered on Starbucks Doubleshot Frappucinos and Jim Beam, and bash away at instruments and computers. I also formed my own trio and cut a thoroughly decent five tune demo with three really talented jazz/rock musicians, one of whom plays guitar for Rogue Wave now.

Good times.

I stopped being in bands to get married and move to the country and have a baby but I never stopped writing songs. I wrote an Ellington-inspired dirge when my dog died. I switched genres to kid-appropriate country lullabies for a few years after the baby. I wrote a foolishly idealistic song about the book Life of Pi, attempted to get into the hands of the music producer when the movie was in process.

Now that I live in Sacramento, I realize that finding a band when you aren’t already in a band is like finding a job when you are unemployed. If musicians in town are good enough to be pros, they are already too busy to do anything for fun.

Last year around this time, I had a creative breakup, which if you asked me, is way worse than a romantic breakup. It was as if another one of these rare collaborative connections appeared and then promptly vanished. I was disappointed.

So my new band is the robot I am typing on. It actually works pretty good, if you close your eyes, you can imagine what a real band might sound like. I’m slow with programming, so at this rate, it will take me another six years to produce my upcoming album: Music for Crickets.